Unsuitable

“More worried about what’s in your carpetbag.” Polly pulled away. Etta was ogling them. She couldn’t have had her face in her phone now? This was supposed to be a good idea, a way for Audrey to connect with him as a responsible person with a loving family and respectable friends. He had a feeling he’d buggered this.

Worst case he could pretend he didn’t know them.

Polly sat beside Etta on the sandstone wall. “Wazzup, homie?”

“Skive off, old.”

Polly scoffed, “Old.”

Reece laughed and leaned against the wall next to Polly.

“Only an old man would call me homie,” said Etta

“And the skive off thing, what’s that about?” said Polly.

“Reece has elephant ears and he doesn’t want me to swear even though he does. He’s like Double Standard Dude. He should have a cape and tights.”

Reece grunted and exchanged an eye-roll with Polly. Etta and Polly were like a game of dodgeball. Until she turned sixteen Etta had idolised Polly, but sixteen was a whole new bag of mess and now she was either in love with him or hated the guy’s guts. At sixteen, life had handed him baby formula and nappy rash ointment. Reece had no idea what was going on with Etta, but she thrived off verbally smacking Polly every time she saw him. Polly rolled with it. Reece had been glad to hand over parenting to Charlie where Etta was concerned.

“Since when do you do what Reece says, homie?” said Polly.

“Hah, this’ll be interesting.”

“Since we’re on Double Standard Dude’s family and friend’s job interview.”

In front of them the lead of a small white yappy dog got caught under the wheel of a stroller. Reece went for the dog, while Polly lifted the stroller. They untangled dog, owner, stroller, screaming babe and harassed mum and went back to their places on the wall. Whole thing took less than a minute.

“Homie, see that waxhead in the yellow trucker cap?” Polly tipped his chin towards the kid. Reece had noticed him too. He was eyeballing Etta so hard, you could see macular degeneration. “He bothering you?”

Etta eyeballed the guy. She’d perfected the death stare. The surfer boy suddenly found his feet fascinating. “Nope.”

Reece smiled. Polly would do anything for any of the girls. An only child, he’d learned how to bottle feed same time as Reece did, they’d played countless video games while babysitting the girls together. After all the mad, bad things they’d done together, it was only now there was strain in their friendship over Reece’s decision not to join the business.

He checked the clock on the surf club wall. Audrey would be here soon. He ID-ed a runaway skateboard on target to skittle a free-range toddler whose dad was one of the face in a screen tribe. No sign of mum or the skater. He put a foot out and stopped the board, an arm out and lifted the toddler clear of it. The toddler was back on his feet and on his way without realising it wasn’t someone he knew who’d scooped him up, and the dad never lifted his eyes.

“Catch,” said Polly.

Reece laughed. Maybe that was good omen. When he felt Sky’s arm around his waist and turned to kiss her hello, he decided to believe Double Standard Dude might just get away with it.

6: Stalker

Les looked through the gap between her oversized sunnies and her enormous hat. Audrey had wanted backup for this, someone she could bounce opinions off and Les volunteered when she was thinking park, beach, time with Mia, coffee. Now that it was park, beach, Mia, coffee and surreptitiously ogling hot men, Les was beyond enthusiastic.

Les handed Mia a dried apricot from the Tupperware container in Audrey’s daypack. “What I want to talk about is Audrey the stalker. I mean, who knew?”

“I’m not stalking.”

At a minimum, stalking required multiple locations. What she was doing from behind a bank of trees watching Reece and his entourage was more like spying. She hefted Mia on her hip; there was dried apricot dribble all over her shirt. Eventually Mia would learn to chew with her mouth closed, but not today.

“Are we not hiding so we can watch your prospective manny and his manny posse, which is apparently full of junior Malibu Barbies?”

“He doesn’t like the term manny and they’re his sisters. I asked him to set up a meeting somewhere he’d take Mia. He said he might bring his family.”

Les flapped a hand in the general direction of their target and Mia laughed, so she did it again, just as funny. “Manny, nanny,” she hand flapped, Mia giggled, “semantics, isn’t it, Mia the Marvellous?”

“Marvel us,” Mia agreed.

“What I really want to talk about is hubba hubba.” Les gestured towards Reece and his gang.